


Condemned

by BlueNeutrino



Category: The Boys (TV 2019)
Genre: Gen, Whump, because why not
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-30
Updated: 2020-07-30
Packaged: 2021-03-06 05:15:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,583
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25617955
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BlueNeutrino/pseuds/BlueNeutrino
Summary: A condemned building, a fatal mistake, and Butcher finds himself lying wounded in the rubble with his life in a supe's hands.
Comments: 5
Kudos: 19





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ValmureEld (InkSiren)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/InkSiren/gifts).



> Written as part of a fic trade with ValmureEld, as we’ve taken it upon ourselves to fix the shortage of Butcher whump.

The first of his senses to come back is taste. The tang in his mouth is bitter and metallic, clinging to his tongue and creeping towards the back of his throat until he coughs violently, provoking the return of the second of his senses—pain. His next breath is strained and grating, fighting against a band of pressure wound tight across his chest. Light creeps in through cracked eyelids, dust on his eyelashes, and with a groan, Butcher succeeds in lifting his head.

He's on the ground. Him and what must be hundreds of kilos of brick and masonry, fallen the three storeys from where the floor had caved in. He ought to have known better: taken more care if he planned to lay a trap in a condemned building, but the load bearing wall that had collapsed didn't give him a second chance. Something cracked his head on the way down. Something else—worse—landed on top of him, and with a lurch as he gingerly attempts movement, Butcher realises he's pinned. A steel girder across his hips. Concrete weighting it on either side, and it's not going to budge.

Not that that matters. Judging from the angle of his partially-obscured right leg, that's broken anyway.

" _Fuck._ " The hiss of frustration turns to one of pain as sensation returns to his extremities in a burst. Everything hurts. Breathing is an effort, and to top it all off, he's bleeding. Presumably. The moistness soaking through his jacket can only be blood.

Forcing another breath into protesting lungs, Butcher blinks the dust from his eyes and attempts to reach for his phone. Cracked screen, he notes, wrist aching as he pulls it from his pocket. Unresponsive. Just _maybe_ that wouldn't have been a problem, had he told anyone where he was going.

Butcher swears again, head falling back onto the rubble accompanied by a surge of nausea that's equal parts from panic and pain. Pale light streams through the hole that had once been ceiling, and he wonders how long he's already been out. A few hours, maybe? How long until nightfall?

Until the demolition crews arrive to raze the rest of the building to the ground?

He's not going to be left to die. Even when he insists on (foolishly, recklessly) acting solo, he has no doubt that sooner or later Hughie at least will insist on looking for him, albeit out of dread at what he’s done.

What worries him is that maybe the trap he hadn't finished laying will attract a supe after all.


	2. Chapter 2

The answer comes three hours later.

Consciousness came and went, came and went, in between bouts of struggling with the weight across his legs and trying to find all the places from which he's bleeding and stem it, but in the end lightheadedness proved too much and it was easier just to shut his eyes and leave his body to do the fighting on its own.

By the time he feels the cool touch on his brow to jerk him back from semi-oblivion, he already knows it's a battle he's losing.

"Don't move." A woman's voice says, soft but firm.

Butcher groans, easing open his eyes to find it's much darker than the last time he'd looked. Through the distant remnants of the roof, there's a patch of what looks like the night's sky.

"You're lucky to be alive," the woman continues, and he squints to make out her features in the darkness. From the shadowy silhouette beside him, the best he can discern is her eyes—milky white, vaguely luminous, if he focuses on them long enough. Faint moonlight falls on her hair, equally pale, and Butcher groans again in recognition.

Albino, she's called. D-list supe with the supposedly formidable ability on paper to manipulate chemical reactions, and in practice not much more than a party performer that ceased to have relevance over a decade ago.

Butcher grinds his teeth and half-wishes it had been Homelander who came after all. "Not the word I'd use." It comes out hoarse, little more than a whisper.

"There's an artery damaged in your leg. Were it not for the weight of this girder, you'd have been dead long before now."

He still doesn't quite see how that's lucky. "Well, goody for me."

"What are you doing here?"

"Safety inspection."

She doesn't react. Even with his eyes adjusting to the darkness, Butcher doesn't see so much as a flicker of an expression on her face. She's not looking at him, he realises—her eyes are cast down, but the complete blankness of them shows no focus. It isn't sight she uses, but perception, sensing the chemistry of her surroundings.

"There's fluid in your chest," she continues. "A slow bleed. From somewhere around here…" The hand she'd left hovering by his face begins to wander towards the collar of his shirt, and he flinches.

"Don't touch me."

"If I'm to stop the bleeding, I have to."

"We both fucking know you don't intend to help me out of the goodness of your heart, so—" His retort cuts off into a fit of coughing, upper body giving a violent shudder that radiates to the parts of him still unable to move. He's helpless to stop her this time as she presses a firm hand to his sternum, unperturbed by the flecks of blood that spray from his mouth.

"I've forced a clot to form over the wound in your leg," she says calmly once the coughing passes. "And purged most of the toxins building in your tissues from the crushing injury, but you have multiple broken ribs and lacerated organs. If I try to stop the internal haemorrhaging completely, there's a risk I'll create blood clots in your heart. You need medical attention."

"Then fuck off," he mumbles, failing to muster the intended venom. "I'll get my own."

Still no reaction beyond that same blank, white stare. A beat passes in silence, and then she says, "There's a box made of zinc upstairs. It doesn't match any of the other materials present in the building, so I wonder if you can tell me: what is it doing here?"

Beneath her hand, his heart thumps a fraction harder. "I don't know what you're talking about."

"Funny. There's traces of chemicals left on it that match those in your skin. Fingerprints. I thought, perhaps, you'd like the opportunity to explain before I call in help."

The pressure on his chest increases, each breath demanding more effort than the one before. "Like I said. Safety inspection."

"I'm not Homelander. Zinc poses no obstacle to me. I know what's inside it."

 _Oh._ Well, that's him done for. Of all the fucking ways he could have possibly fucked this up. "Just get it over with then," he snarls, or tries to, baring his bloodstained teeth. "I'm not going to talk, so you may as well just kill me."

"Is that what you want?" She cocks her head to the side, pearly eyes wandering towards his face and her brow creasing with the glimmer of a frown. "How would you prefer I do it?"

He's completely unprepared to answer that. He blinks up at her, tasting the blood on his lips as he opens and closes his mouth. "If I'm dying anyway, I'd appreciate if you fucked off back to wherever you came from and left me to it."

"That's certainly one possibility. Especially since I'm the only thing keeping your heart beating right now."

If he hadn't been already, Butcher is instantly hyper-aware of her hand pressing against his chest. "What?"

"I'm currently forcing the ions in your heart cells to maintain a functioning cardiac action potential. Without me, the reactions would simply have stopped several minutes ago. Your heart wants to give up."

"No." Butcher growls, trying to lift his head again before finding he doesn't have the strength. The most he can manage is to draw a deep, shuddering breath. "No it fucking does not."

Her lips twitch. "It's good to hear you say that."

He falls silent again, focusing on maintaining a steady rhythm of breathing as he feels a sudden spiteful will to survive. His heart continues to thump, knocking against his ribs with a force he's sure hadn't been there moments ago, and he wonders how much of that is of its own volition and how much is her. "How long do I have?" he mutters a few moments later. "Before your backup gets here?"

"I don't have backup," she answers. "Haven't in years. Though, I'll admit I misled you. I did call for an ambulance before waking you up. I expect they won't be much longer."

"Great. So you're keeping me alive just to hand me over to the feds. You want a thank you?"

A puzzled look crosses her features; the most expressive he's seen her yet. "Why would I be handing you over to the feds?"

"You trying to tell me you haven't seen the wanted posters?"

"I've never seen anything on a wanted poster. I just know they're made of paper. And ink."

The moment she says it, he feels foolish. "When you find out, you're going to regret not just crushing my heart right now."

"I'm not going to regret not doing that." With her other hand, she touches his face again. This time he lets her.


	3. Chapter 3

"Let me tell you, Billy, I'll make sure she regrets it if she _does._ "

The voice cuts through the quiet like a hammer shattering glass. Butcher starts, jerking his head up as his heart starts to pound in a way that he's sure is entirely of its own accord. Across the room, two menacing points of red pierce the darkness and begin to glide slowly, ominously closer.

Without quite reaching the point of facing him, Albino turns her head. "Homelander."

"Ambulance has been cancelled," Homelander continues, coming to a stop just where the shaft of light from overhead illuminates a leering smile. "I told them not to worry, Homelander has it all under control."

"Neither you nor I can heal him," Albino says with a calmness that Butcher is trying to project, but absolutely doesn't share. "This man needs a hospital."

" _I said_ I have it under control." He steps closer still, the threat in his eyes perhaps lost on her, but not the one in his tone. "Now step back, let me take care of it."

"If I move away from him, he dies."

"I'm watching his heart. It'll be fine on its own."

She doesn't move.

Homelander glares with a red flash, and then turns the force of his displeasure onto Butcher. "Let me guess, you weren't expecting to see me yet? I'm not meant to show up until morning, am I? Once the demolition's started and you've laid the bait." He raises his right hand, and in the pale light Butcher sees the tape recorder he'd been carrying the moment the floor had decided to cave in. "Found this upstairs. Figured you didn't plan to use it yet, ' _Homelander, you gotta help me! They're bringing the building down and I'm trapped inside!'"_ He mocks the contents of the tape with a chuckle. "You couldn't find even a slightly convincing actor to record this?"

Butcher grunts. "You still came though, didn't you? You dumb cunt." He feels Albino's fingers curl slightly over his ribs in silent warning.

Homelander ignores the goading. He strides closer, crouching down until he's as close as Albino on Butcher's other side. "You know, there's one thing I'm curious about, Billy, and you're gonna tell me," he says, all trace of the false smile vanished. "The zinc box upstairs—what's in it?"

Butcher glares back in silence.

"One of you, _answer me."_

Nothing.

Homelander reaches out, lays his hand over Albino's and Butcher prepares to feel his ribs shatter, and then hears her voice. It's short. Clipped. The first note of panic he's been able to detect since she got here.

That disconcerts him more than the loathing in Homelander's eyes.

"Uranium," she answers curtly. "And TNT. It's a dirty bomb."

Mildly surprised, though perhaps more that she answered than the answer itself, Homelander arches an eyebrow. "I see," he elaborates. "So, there's some kid trapped in a crumbling building—a kid that doesn't exist—and I'm desperately searching for him when I come across this strange box. Can't see inside it, no time to lose, so I laser it open and— _boom!_ " He chuckles darkly. "Suddenly, I'm Homelander the reckless supe who got a whole town contaminated with radiation because I don't think before I laser. You realise that's a fucking stretch if you want to smear my reputation, don't you, Billy? Not to mention _domestic terrorism._ No wonder your little friends want nothing to do with this."

He raises his head, turning his attention to Albino who gazes (or at least appears to) levelly back. "I asked you to step away from him," Homelander repeats.

"I told you no."

"Did you hear what I just said? What he was planning to do here?"

"I heard you. Did you hear me?"

Butcher holds his breath. His heart has taken to pounding painfully—at least part of that is all him. He wonders if maybe part of her is actually afraid too.

Homelander huffs. His face contorts like a toddler about to throw a tantrum, and then, in an instant, it's over. Red eyes flash. A body falls. The stench of burned meat permeates the air.

Butcher feels it like a blow to his own chest. He gasps, half expecting to feel the gallop of his heart abruptly stop with a similar surge of pain, but far too soon after he realises he's still alive. Homelander rounds on him, replacing Albino's touch on his chest with his own cruel hand bunching in Butcher's shirt.

"I know, I wasn't supposed to do that," the supe chunters. "Doesn't look good for the whole superhero-teamwork thing. Though, it's not like they'll find her body once the explosion goes off. She'll just take on the chemical composition of all the other stuff here." Before Butcher has chance to respond, Homelander has grasped the steel girder pinning him one handed and flung it across the room.

Despite himself, Butcher cries out. Pain abruptly floods his legs as the pressure lifts, and as the hand on his collar jerks roughly, he find himself being hefted from the floor. "No…" He bats feebly at the grip hauling him higher, and with a jolt, realises Homelander has begun to ascend towards the hole in the ceiling.

"What's the matter? Don't tell me you actually feel _bad_ for her." Homelander taunts, watching Butcher's eyes flicker down towards the body receding below them. "She's one of the big bad supes you _hate_ , remember? You should be thanking me."

They pass through the floor immediately above, stars dancing in front of Butcher's eyes.

"We can add this to your rap sheet—" Homelander continues, "—detonating a dirty bomb. Once the police catch up with you, of course."

Past the next floor to the third storey—and the room with the zinc box.

"Right now, it looks like once again _I'm_ the one rescuing your ass from an explosion of _your own_ making."

Butcher sees it almost in slow motion as that scarlet glow swells once more within Homelander's eyes, and then the two parallel beams shoot somewhere over his shoulder and the whole world turns white.


End file.
